Social Commerce Regulations Are Speeded Up, Minister Of Trade Zulhas: If Not Regulated, Our Industry Collapses

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JAKARTA - Minister of Trade (Mendag) Zulkifli Hasan said that his party was accelerating the completion of regulations related to commercial activities on social media (social commerce).

According to him, the latest regulation will revise the Regulation of the Minister of Trade (Permendag) Number 50 of 2020 concerning Provisions for Business Licensing, Advertising, Development, and Supervision of Business Actors in Electronic Systems (PPMSE). He believes that the impact of social commerce will also hit micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

"If it is not regulated, it will collapse (other industries) for three months, our beauty industry can collapse," he said in a written statement quoted on Wednesday, September 6.

Zulhas, Zulkifli Hasan's nickname, explained that there were four proposals regulated by the government in the PPMSE.

The first is to enforce the same rules for e-commerce sales and offline sales, especially the imposition of taxes.

"Then the second point is that the government will prohibit the sale of imported goods amounting to under 100 million US dollars or below Rp1.5 million for products sent cross-border or through cross-border trade," he said.

Next is the third point being that digital platforms are prohibited from becoming producers. While the last point is that the government will differentiate the rules for playing in e-commerce with social commerce sales.

On the same occasion, Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki supported the initiation of the relevant authorities to take bold steps to limit imported products in online stores.

"We have to reflect on India and the United States (US) who dare to ban TikTok operations," he said.

Teten added, another example is India, which dares to refuse the presence of social media applications that are aggressively carrying out trading activities.

"Why don't we look like India? The US also forbids it, but it doesn't unify. Selling is okay, but not to be combined with social media. We, social media, are selling too," he said.